HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER (PART ONE)
There I was sitting in a gloomy bar in Chicago's South Side again, listening to Ben. It was New Year's Eve, and the ball game had finished three hours ago. And still he droned on, "Let me tell you a thing or two about Mathematics."
"Okay," I said, unenthusiastically, "tell me about Mathematics."
Ben jumped a little there, as this was the first time I had interrupted him in the last hour. He seemed to relish the attention and rushed to fill the silence. "Math, you see, is off by one."
"What the Hell are you talking about?" I said, knowing this was a suspect move on my part.
"Take countdowns for instance. Have you seen a space agency countdown? What am I saying, of course you have. Everyone's seen one of those! Well, they start way out and they'll say something like, 'two hours to liftoff,' and then 'an hour to liftoff' and all the way down to one minute to lift off. But, then they start ticking off the seconds. When they're going, 'Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four' ... guess how many seconds are left to launch when they say 'Four'"?
"Um, four?" I say.
"No, five. When they say four, there are actually five seconds left until the spaceship lifts off. Count it off on your fingers. And remember, you don't lift off on one, you lift off on zero. Math is off by one."
It was at that exact moment--or that moment plus one--that I decided to get married.
The End
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